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El Cara Mango Salsa Especiale requires:
- 4 mangos sliced and diced
- red onion
- cilantro / coriander
- chives
- green chilli
- bell pepper
- lime or lemon juice

Over $500 raised, $ for $ matching by the Atlassian Foundation, a tonne of fun. Thanks folks, you made my day!

The Dumbest Idea In The World – Steve Denning, Forbes is a recent article on the approach to capitalism in the Western world, it touches on America specifically. Below are some comments from my old man, Peter Muldoon, on the parallels to Australia.

Very Interesting article.

My take away – over regulation and interference by governments can sometimes create more problems instead of solving them.

His suggestion is to repeal – the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act & the Regulation FASB 142. I am sure that the intentions of the legislation were honourable and well meaning but the consequences were not well considered.

We have the same problems in Australia. For example:-

The recent Labor Government introduced new corporate legislation the “two strikes rule”
Which means that if 25% or more of shareholders at a Annual General Meeting vote against the annual remuneration report for directors and senior executives of the company two years in a row – then the whole Board of Directors must step down and a new Board is elected.
How a publicly listed company operates without a Board of Directors while this process is in train is yet to worked thru.
Government Regulation introduced in haste with unknown consequences.

The question you might ask is:- why shareholders (25% not even 50%) would reject the independent remuneration report?

The issue is:- under existing Australian govt regulation all Annual Reports must itemise the remuneration packages of all Directors and the top management executives. The report must disclose by executive, by name, base salary, bounuses and conditions, expenses, allowances, share options and share bonus, all performance criteria and all that makes up the executives remuneration package.
Great for shareholder transparancy but not good for the business community at large,

This means that any executive and company director has a readily available database of competitive remuneration packages of executives in like industries and like companies. The nett effect is the continuing ratcheting up of remuneration packages to stay equal to or above their peers.

Corporate advisory and salary packaging firms have developed businesses doing just this, comparing executive A to executive B and recommending new and better payment packages. The two strikes regulation was introduced to limit this escalation of remuneration packages.

So a new piece of Government Regulation is created to compensate for deficiencies in an earlier piece of regulation.
And so it goes, regulation-on-regulation, binding up the resources of executive management in satisfying the government regulatory controls,
instead of getting on with the purpose of the business.

A very good and apt article. I hope the Australian Government takes time to read it.
Thanks
Peter

Thanks Peter, let’s hope the Australian Government does take note.

After a whole lot of confusion within Atlassian we’ve done our own thing. The chairperson of Beyond Blue made a whole lot of disparaging remarks about single parent or gay parent families. As such the Atlassian team is now behind Grovember, and we’re raising money for the Black Dog institute instead.

All too much to consider?! Well keep this in mind, prostate cancer is bad. Lots of Aussie blokes (and fellas all around the world) have to deal with it. Cancer is bad. If you are keen to prevent this form of cancer (in the future, as our funding is going to research) then donate. For my part I will be chopping off the beard and growing a Mo. You boys and girls are going to get a laugh out of this, @OrganicSydney (sorry dear!) is going to hate it.

October 31 @ 1103am:

November 1 @ 1201am (first time I have shaved with a razor in about 10 years, so show me the money!):

November 7 @ 1027am (nasty mo, here I come):

November 14 @ 0824am (shocking how good it looks!):

November 28 @ 0905am (looking good Muldoon):

Oh what a week!

Liz and I have just returned from a week in Hong Kong. We had an amazing time touring around the place. The highlight was the wedding of our friends Simon and Hester this past Sunday. They looked bloody stunning and it was a fantastic wedding ceremony and reception.

As this was the first Chinese wedding I had attended – and as a groomsman no less – I was introduced to a whole new world of activities. You see, the groom and groomsmen need to undertake challenges prior to having the tea ceremony with the brides parents. In our case we danced, bartered for cash payment, ate wasabi, did the limbo and a whole lot more. Thank goodness we managed to impress the bridesmaids and they let Simon greet Hester!

Congrats to the newlyweds!

A few more selected photos are on Flickr.

@atlassian cited in New Internationalist article discussing pros/cons of introducing a maximum wage:

#sharearecipe spaghetti with lime and rocket -

#sharearecipe green chilli chicken curry -

We started off at Kudu and took a cocktail making class. It was an awesome birthday present from Nat & Dave for Liz’s 30th, bloody brilliant guys – Liz loved it!

After the class we had some brilliant Don Julio tequila in a few different cocktails made by the awesome fellas behind the bar – Ben and IB. Tommy’s Margarita along with Mexican Smile were our favourites. Fun facts: tequila is the only alcohol that is a stimulant, agave syrup is bloody tasty and good on breakfast cereal (it is healthy and non-alcoholic FYI).

From Kudu we moved on to Fish Face for dinner. Now this place was something damn special – the food was amazing and the atmosphere was buzzing. We had been meaning to eat here since we first walked past it one evening while house sitting for Roy and Kerry back in 2009. Wish we’d got there sooner. Crab soup, tuna tartare, prawn ravioli and hand cut chips (yes, a mixed bunch but we wanted to try a few things). All were fantastic, and the tuna tartare was just devine.

Finally we made our way to Gelato Messina, a perennial favourite, for a few new flavours – Guido, Peanut Butter & Gingerbread, Apricot & Cinnamon.

All up, a brilliant evening.

Confluence zombies rule!